Its wild that it took almost 20 years and dozens of games for the biggest stealth action series around to finally bend towards feudal Japan. Assassin's Creed Shadows makes the most of that theme, with a great pair of shinobi and samurai heroes sharing center stage that are well-written and fun to skulk through giant castles or wade into vicious battles with. Besides the setting, the bulk of the changes this time focus on making smaller tweaks to well-established systems, such as less cluttered maps and skill trees, while also doubling down on things that really worked in 2023s Assassins Creed Mirage, like the more focused and tougher combat that accompanies its better paced main quests. Its not a perfect reset, as imbalances and missed opportunities abound, but I feel more confident than ever that Assassins Creed could be back and here to stay.Like a river in the rainy season, Shadows story overflows with cliches that are signature to fiction set in this era. Warriors wander the land to bring honor to themselves and their masters. Absent rulers let wealthy bureaucrats exploit the poor. Bandits hold the countryside in the cold grip of fear. If youre a fan of James Clavells Shogun or the excellent movies of Akira Kurosawa, you have certainly seen the bulk of what protagonists Yasuke and Naoe are made to navigate. This isnt a bad thing, and morally complex intersecting plots still keep the intrigue high, which is the same trick that made Assassins Creed Valhallas stories work when they did. I dont think I was particularly wowed by the writing on a regular basis, but there are some standout moments of tense reflection and curious happenings sprinkled throughout. The typical Assassins Creed conspiracy woven into it fits perfectly within the war torn Sengoku period of Japan, too, like a hidden blade snugly in its wrist sheath. Assassin's Creed Shadows Review ScreenshotsThe leads themselves are wonderful. You spend a lot of the early game with the sharp-witted and broody Naoe, who is among the last shinobi warriors of the Iga clan, a role thrust upon her by tragedy. That tragedy befell her in part by the hands of the charismatic hulk Yasuke, who is a tireless warrior for justice and peace. When they begin working together, they are frequently each others most reliable consul, with sound and often different perspectives on the events going on around them. In other words, they truly do balance one another, and while I dont think either one would win popularity contests against other series stars like Ezio or Edward, together they serve as the bright light in the center of a largely dark tale of revenge.The story is organized in a way that can be enjoyed in pieces and at your leisure without getting too lost between plot points.The story overall is paced similarly to Valhalla, where the cardinal reason to be in each of the nine regions of the map is to play through a mostly self-contained chapter. That said, Shadows does a better job of making sure at least some story elements and characters dont just completely vanish when you leave a region the way they did in its predecessor. Not every new lord or business man you meet becomes completely irrelevant after youve solved their problems. I also found these sections, and the overall time it took to move from chapter to chapter, to be more brisk and less filled with frustrating filler than past games. Its still a bit too full of go here, do that as bridges between major moments than Id prefer, but it's organized in a way that can be enjoyed in pieces and at your leisure without getting too lost between plot points, almost like how one might read a good book. Most of the missions in Shadows start on the objective board, a bigger and more elaborate chart of people that need assistance and targets that need eliminating adapted from Assassins Creed Mirage. Thematically, this approach matches the tone of using all the information you gather to identify hidden members of the secret society trying to plunge Japan into chaos. Functionally, the way it organizes outstanding tasks and the people involved is far more useful than the old bulleted quest lists. It does trade some of the magic of exploration away as a cost of this efficacy, though. More than once I organically stumbled across a jerk that couldnt be talked down, just to kill them and find not only his crossed out profile tacked to my board, but also the exact number of remaining silhouettes of the gang I had no idea they were a part of until right then. But its a trade I would make every time.Selecting a quest gave me a short list of clues to help discern where the objective was, which is easier to figure out depending on how well Id searched that part of the map already. Past games have given hints to identify targets like this before, hoping to create some friction between you and the effort to find your quarry, but Shadows is the first one that I felt constantly made me look at my map and actually deduce where the spot in question might be by using those clues and some educated guesses. I could use scouts, one of the assets you can develop at your hideout, to assist in the narrowing process, pinging an area on the map and highlighting unidentified objectives in the zone. This doesn't reveal hidden locations or features of the map outside of just a marker though, so it's a bad way to clear fog of war from a distance. It will also cost one scout whether they find something or not, and scouts are replenished in very few ways, so scouting can be a real risk if youre trying to make progress in the main story especially early on.I felt compelled to just ride through the countryside and genuinely explore.Rather than lighting up your map with a galaxy of tooltips, Shadows mostly relies on sparse point-of-interest icons to push you towards the areas youll need to see the finer details of in-person. Even when you climb up to the signature highpoints to take a good long look at your surroundings, what youll see is a bevy of nondescript icons that tell you that something is out there, but youre gonna have to hop down from that perch and go check them out for yourself to know what. I love this I could feel my brain starting to detangle the checklist conditioning that years of these games had instilled in me. Not only did I feel compelled to just ride through the countryside and genuinely explore stuff without much expectation of grand rewards, I also felt no nagging compulsion to check off every possible thing to do in a region inorganically. Jarrett Green's Top 10 Assassin's Creed GamesSee AllMost of these undiscovered locations fall into one of a number of reliable categories, like castles you can infiltrate and attempt to steal special gear from or any of the many villages scattered across Japan, but you cant be sure unless you take it in for yourself. A common thing I would always stop to handle whenever I came across them were world activities these are smaller locations and events that, when completed, add knowledge points to your characters, increasing their knowledge levels and adding new options to their skill trees. Not all of these events are exciting, with running around temples to find missing scroll pages being my least favorite, but they often dont take too long and the points are worth it in the end. And in the case of something like the horse archery challenges, they can add an interesting distraction from the action for a short spell.I was absolutely flooded by the cosmetics I unlocked just in the natural course of completing tasks and looting.Between outings, I spent some time at the hideout, this iteration of Valhallas Ravensthorpe settlement. After collecting minerals, crops, and wood out in the world, you can use those resources to build and upgrade important buildings here that give you access to new assets. I spent the majority of my time at the forge managing my equipment, while other important buildings provide more passive additions or have features that can be managed in places outside of the hideout, like the new summoning ability from the dojo which let me call in help from certain allies I met during my adventure. Im glad I didnt have to dote on this place very much as I personally cant be bothered to decorate a homestead, but for those interested in that sort of thing I was absolutely flooded by the cosmetics I unlocked just in the natural course of completing tasks and looting, so youll never be starved for options to spice the place up.What We Said About Assassin's Creed MiragePlayAssassins Creed Mirages return to the stealthy style that launched this series doesnt do everything right, but everything it does feels like it was done with purpose. This means a shorter game with a smaller map, fewer collectibles, smaller scope in combat, and a limited selection of gear to play with all of which I found refreshing relative to the arguably bloated scale of 100-hour games like Odyssey and Valhalla. It also means an overly simplistic plot with mostly forgettable characters, but what the story lacks in depth it makes up for with its straightforward quest progression and fast pacing. Though there's no big standout wow moment, Baghdad is a beautiful location in its own right, and the worlds detail is focused inward, making every alley and hovel feel well traveled and full of detail and history. Id recommend Mirage to anyone whos lapsed on Assassins Creed, as its back-to-basics approach is a successful first step in returning the feeling that the earlier industry-defining games gave me so long ago. Jarrett Green, October 4, 2023Score: 8Read the full Assassin's Creed Mirage review